Thursday, November 27, 2008

By the way, Stephen, ...

10 comments:

No kidding, huh? $300 million down the crapper for absolutely nothing. An election during which Harper lied incessantly and couldn't even be bothered to present a platform until the very end. Does anyone even remember in the least what was in it? And now they're headed for massive deficits and gimmicky "cuts" like the slashing of public financing of political parties. What bullshit.

The Nazi's were the first "animal rights" party.. they were environmentalists, they advocated (initially) strengthening trade unions, they advocated the states obligation to provide a livelihood for their citizens, they sought to control and take "incomes unearned by work", they proposed nationalization of business, they demanded profit sharing between business and their employees....

Look it up. The only reason that we have been conditioned to see fascists as "right wing" is that Mussollini (who started out as a socialist)used the King's fear and his own desire for power to stigmatize the communists as the "true enemy".. where, in fact, his was just totalitarian communism with a different name.

So.. Conservatives might be a lot of things.. but the closest thing we have to fascists in Canada are probably the NDP or the Green Party..

Of course we need to take the pontifications of "roblaw" with a whole pillar of salt. For example, here he claims that he picked up a "rather persistent troll". It would seem that a grand total of ONE comment by liberal supporter is the new "persistent". There was ONE anon comment from me as well, which the "persistent" comment was following on to, and it certainly demonstrates roblaw's propensity for over-generalization.

Similarly, we see roblaw over-generalizing while working the old "nazis are leftists" canard. Funny how he could have seen me discuss this over at Neo's some time back, but of course neo is a little sensitive about any mention of nazis for some reason, and summarily deleted my views.

I think roblaw would likely agree that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not in fact democratic and is anything but belonging to the "people". But he chooses to believe the lies of Hitler, just as millions of Germans did when they give the nazis a minority government. Did the nazis ever nationalize any business? No. Did they collectivize anything? No. It was business as usual with a totalitarian dictatorship. You did have to show extreme nationalism though, uncritical support of the troops and the regime for example.

I think you can make the case that most salient feature of fascism is authoritarianism, and generally dictatorship. That is about all it has in common with communism.

But I dispute roblaw's assertion as to which parties are the closest to fascists in Canada. I think it is the CPC who would be the closet, hands down. Not conservatives in general, just the Conservative-Reform-Alliance-Party. Even though I see they are far from fascist based on their actions, with a majority I think that would be the tendency.

..LOL.. Ok, I appreciate the caveat from Liberal Supporter that the current incarnate of the Conservative Party is not actually "fascist"..

And I concede that clearly, after Hitler and Mussolini obtained power, their rule was not, in any sense, based upon a socialist collective.. but, the point I'm making, is both the Nazis and the Fascists gained power by mobilizing the middle and lower class in particular, both leaders rising up through socialist organizations initially..

And..if I can get somewhat non-partisan for a moment.. the point I think we can take from their example is not that the "right" or the "left" are responsible for Nazi's and Fascists.. but that the populace has to be on guard for any political organization that starts telling them to drink their brand of kool-aid because THEY KNOW BEST...

Hence my tendancy to be in favor of smaller government (don't get me started with how the Cons aren't anything close to small government.. but hey, they didn't create the gun control program..).. a strong social safety net, a strong evironmental policy (which I agree we don't have) and.. otherwise, get the fuck out of my life.. let me raise my children the best I can, let me work hard, and take from my labor only as much as is NEEDED to help those who CAN'T help themselves.. let me worship, or not, in whatever manner I want as long as I'm not pushing it down someone else's throat..

..and stay the fuck out of my freedom to slam and be slammed here, regardless of how stupid I may be, or how stupid those who slam me may be..